How political parties use social media to garner votes

While previous elections have been dominated by colourful mass rallies and door-to-door campaigning, these days Twitter "town hall" meetings, Google Hangouts and Facebook debates have become de riguer. Political parties have made a conscious effort to use these and other social media platforms in the run up to the elections to woo voters.

This is a clever tactic with the country having six million Facebook users and at least a million active Twitter users. South Africa is the tenth largest Twitter user in the world ‘with 467,500 unique visitors every month - accounting for 0.85%of the site’s usage.’

Although it may be too early to tell some analysts have begun to look at the impact of social media on election campaigning. The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) argued that it could prove rewarding for political parties to engage in this medium. The ISS cited the effectiveness of social media campaigns in the 2008 US Presidential Campaign as well as the 2013 Kenyan electoral campaign.

The most significant benefits for political parties are twofold - a) it gives them immediate access to communicate directly with their followers and b) there is space for two-way engagement that is seldom possible at mass events.

For smaller partiers with limited budgets, social media is a no-brainer as it is the cheapest marketing strategy. It allows them the opportunity to get their message across - this is especially important in an environment where the media coverage is heavily biased towards the bigger parties.

Of course social media does have its drawbacks. One, the majority of people using these tools represents a small section of the population - usually middle class and educated. This means that the majority, who are often marginalised, are excluded from the conversation. Two, ill-conceived comments and smear campaigns are common- and as a result political parties and politicians are often “trending” for the wrong reasons.

The parties have tended to utilise the platforms differently with the ANC and Agang having the most visually engaging Facebook pages whilst the EFF and the DA tend to be more text heavy and speak towards the parties’ stance on various issues. On Twitter there is a great deal of engagement from the DA and EFF (whose followers have grown at a rapid rate since opening their account in November 2013).

At the time of writing, the ANC (MyANC_) has 9.5K tweets and 111 K followers. The EFF (@EconFreedomZA) has 2.7K tweets and 39.8 K followers, the Democratic Alliance (@DA_News) 23.5K tweets and 70.3K followers and Agang (AgangSA) with 44K followers and 5K tweets.

As far as facebook is concerned, the ANC has 112,305 likes and 15,905 ‘talking’ about it (‘talking’ is a term used to denote how many people engage with the page). The DA has 81,999 likes with 46,742 ‘talking’ about it, the EFF has 79,002 likes and 3,857 ‘talking’ about it and Agang has 35 264 likes and 1266 ‘talking’ about it.

It is clear that even though technology is improving all the time and that new tools are being integrated, the traditional forms of campaigning will continue. The ISS is correct in saying that political parties “have more to gain than lose in engaging with social media”.